Sexism, racism, agism, smoothies, bumblers, swift-boaters, dreamers—all  flavors in the great American apple pie. As we learn to avoid trans fats so we learn, ever so slowly, to wean ourselves from misogyny, racism, agism and all those other nasties.

The late Democratic primary had plenty of misogyny and racism to go around. It arose among the pundits, the voters and the candidates. But there were triumphs. As Senator Hillary Clinton said in graciously conceding the fight to Senator Barack Obama, there are now eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling, and none of us will forget it. Bless you, Senator. (more…)

I dislike the term flash in the pan because if what looks like gold for a second happens to flash in someone’s pan I’m content to admire it that one time. If the sun glorifies green bottle glass I’m content that it’s not emerald. I like mica schist and fool’s gold as much as gold. I like dandelions and loosestrife as much as hybrid tea roses. (more…)

Now that our planet, a betrayed beloved, is strongly suggesting to us
that unremitting consumerism may just dig us a hole to hell, we might learn a new way of living from the resourcefulness of children.

Have you noticed how children build whole worlds with stick and stones, how they improvise, making magic circles, giving strange animals decent burials? Have you noticed how much they see that adults don’t even think worthy of seeing, just as adults haven’t seen the rape of the planet worthy of their hifalutin attention? (more…)

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing.

—Henry David Thoreau

One of the many blessings of growing old is a certain integrity of smile. There is an instant of delay between cause and effect in which we’re invited to wonder if an elderly person is going to smile at all. I admire this inordinately. The sheer amount of electrical energy required of the young to smile all too often and laugh all too loudly is appalling.

I suppose it’s rooted in desire to please, a disease which handles the elderly more gently than it does the rest of us. (more…)

With Hillary Clinton having recently made like a schoolyard bully, maybe this isn’t the right moment to bring up the issue of misogyny. Or maybe it is.

Anybody who thinks this is a dead-letter issue should take a look at those e-mailed erectile dysfunction advertisements bubbling up from the cesspools of humanity. Their revolting language is full of references to the male member as a weapon. They talk of overpowering, exploding and nailing women. They assure men “their” women will be delighted by this weaponization of sexuality. (more…)

Once you’ve been nuts in New York City you wouldn’t want to do it anywhere else. I know this because I occasionally write and edit in Manhattan’s streets and attract no more attention than the millions of look-at-me’s who gab on their hands-free cell phones. I could be having phone sex or translating Proust, it wouldn’t make any difference to anybody. (more…)

(A Cartography of Peace, Jean L. Connor, Passager Books, 78 pp, paperback, French flap, $13.95)

A life well examined is a bequeathal to humanity. So, when Jean Connor writes in a poem called Riding to Hounds and Other Papers of “friendship and similar perils” we’re aware of being handed an exquisite legacy.

These gracious and wry poems were written between Connor’s seventy-fifth and eighty-fifth year. They constitute her first book of poems, an event consonant with Passager Books’ mission as a vehicle for writers over fifty. This also happens to be Passager’s first book, and it’s an auspicious debut; the production values of the book make it an objet d’art, a true collectible. (more…)

The surpassing silliness of arguing about which politician has flip-flopped on an issue reminds me of my own flip-flopping around Oscar Wilde’s (inset) famous observation that we pretty much have the faces we deserve by the time we’re forty.

I’ve always loved his remark so much that I’ve neglected to notice that it flies in the face of my own experiences. I want him to be right just as the ninnies who complain about flip-flopping want to be right. But a soldier’s long-held photographs have prompted me to confess I have my doubts.

They’re the recently published photos of the staff at a Nazi concentration camp having themselves a high old time, picnicking, singing, playing accordions and slapping each other the back. Look at those faces: hardly a demon among them. Just folks. (more…)

There are many ways to walk down a street in New York City.

You can walk like the Grim Reaper, caring less.

You can walk as if people are supposed to notice you and reward them with an ostentatious, What’re you lookin’ at?

Or you can smile at the faces and demeanors you like and hope for the best. That’s not unlike taking an experimental drug. If it works it just may give you a new lease on life. If it doesn’t work, you’re just another unsung hero.

There are many other styles. Oblivious is good, if you’re seven feet tall or old and brittle. (more…)

I recently took part in a deeply rewarding discussion of late-life writing. Sponsored by Passager journal and press, housed at Baltimore University, the panel at Rehoboth, Delaware, explored not only the challenges facing elderly writers but the elderly’s special strengths.

We were all writers on the panel, Shirley Brewer and I were guests, and Passager’s editors, Kendra Kopelke and
Mary Azrael presided. The people who came had moving stories to tell and were living creative lives. I remember one woman who had been a librarian. In her retirement she decided to move into a community more culturally and ethnically diverse than anything she had known, and she felt richer for it.

Going to the conference I had wondered what to say, what to share. How could I shed light? How could I be encouraging when I myself was encountering so many difficulties on the way to publication. I decided to make two points, one encouraging, one daunting. (more…)